5368 The Second Armada
Many people became shocked by the Evolution Witch's ambition!
It was not enough for her to kill or capture one of the strongest and oldest ancient phase whales known to humanity.
She craved for more. As one of the leaders of the Transhumanist Faction, she constantly sought to overcome her weaknesses and ascend to an even higher state.
To many pilots, advancing to godhood was an unattainable dream. They would sacrifice nearly anything just to gain the power demonstrated by the likes of the Evolution Witch. However, to the greatest human soldiers who managed to overcome so many adversities, becoming a god pilot was only the start of their true journey towards omnipotence!
If they wanted to become a better protector of their people and spread their will to the cosmos, then they needed to pioneer their own way forward!
The Evolution Witch chose a fairly simple and straightforward strategy.
She chose to play into her Geneforger's growth potential by devouring and assimilating other strong organisms!
So long as her god biomech absorbed enough genes and strong biomatter, it could combine all of their best traits and produce novel synergies that would hopefully lead to a qualitative transformation!
At this time, the only organisms worth assimilating in the Evolution Witch's were the gods of the Red Ocean.
They had to be the best ones. The god pilot looked down on phase lords such as the Darkstar King. No matter how far they got along in their evolution, their only pursuit of power was to imitate the phase whales.
The Evolution Witch had greater ambitions than that. Only the descendants of the Elder Gods were worth her time and effort, and of them, assimilating the body of an ancient phase whale was the most rewarding out of all of the options!
Under normal circumstances, it would have been too difficult for her to hunt down, defeat and devour an ancient phase whale whole.
Operation Night Jazz just happened to support her ambitious goal!
The Red Two had many reasons to facilitate the Evolution Witch's absorption of an ancient phase whale.
They could learn a huge amount of information on their formidable adversaries in the Red Ocean.
They might be able to extract a lot of critical and high-level intelligence from the intact brain of a leader of the Red Cabal.
They could also use this dramatic accomplishment to deal a devastating blow to the morale of the native aliens!
As the Evolution Witch had begun the unprecedented process of merging her Geneforger with the strongest and most massive organism she had ever fought against, the battles fought by the other three armadas heated up as well!
When the Red Association and the Red Fleet initially decided to join forces in order to deal a serious blow against the native aliens, they first targeted the Sword of Damocles hanging over red humanity.
Nobody knew what the Tide Station Network was capable of, but none of them underestimated its galaxy-wide capabilities.
It had already displaced an entire dwarf galaxy to a different cosmic neighborhood. The mechers and fleeters speculated that the Red Cabal could utilize these powerful space stations to produce other macro-scale results.
What if the Tide Station Network had the power to selectively displace strategic star systems such as Bridgehead One?
What if it could be used to engulf half of human-occupied space in a destructive space storm that tore everything apart?
This was why the Red Two decided to form four armadas instead of just one or two! They needed to destroy enough Tide Stations to break the links in the networks and render it inoperative!
Different from the First Armada's attack on the Tenth Tide Station, the Second Armada encountered significantly stiffer resistance when they started to advance towards the Twenty-Fourth Tide Station.
The mechs and warships of the Red Two entered into a much more heated battle against the aliens stationed in this star system.
"The aliens may be greater in number here, but that means we can eliminate more alien elites!"
The two stars among them were the dreadnoughts that led the charge.
The Indignation of Righteousness was the largest and most heavily armored dreadnought of the 8 that participated in this massive operation.
"Our defenses are unbreakable."
Measuring at 19 kilometers long and featuring a wider and more barrel-shaped hull, the Indignation of Righteousness was designed to charge forward and bull through enemy lines no matter how much enemy fire she attracted!
Though she was hardly the fastest warship of her class, the Indignation of Righteousness not only featured the thickest hull plating, but also came equipped with the strongest and most abundant azure energy shield generators!
The Indignation's Spark Reactor had to divert so much of its energy output to sustaining the spiking demands of all of those azure energy shield generators that there was hardly anything left for her weapon systems.
The designers of the dreadnought had taken this scenario into account and had chosen to equip the tough dreadnought with a large complement of kinetic cannons.
As the large and heavy kinetic cannon batteries opened fire, they saturated their targets with hyper rounds that broke through the transphasic energy shields with exceptional penetrating properties!
If any of these rounds managed to make it past the energy defenses, they usually inflicted such heavy blows that warships and space stations usually shattered apart after a single salvo!
"The Indignation of Righteousness shall break your nefarious schemes!"
As the heavily armed and armored dreadnought attracted a lot of enemy fire, the Dominion of Man preferred to keep her distance.
Though she was still capable of holding her ground in a slugging match, the 18-kilometer long dreadnought was designed to fight in a different way.
As the other mechs and warships of the Red Two led the way, the resistance from the aliens gradually became shakier and less coherent.
While the human assets continued to exhibit excellent coordination, many hundreds of alien warships and defensive installations started to lose their transphasic energy fields, slow down their fire rate or even suffer from internal explosions!
The Dominion of Man was responsible for this activity. Her greatest weapons did not consist of her respectable complement of gun batteries.
Her true means of attack was delivering heavily armed and armored Dread Marines deep inside enemy warships and fortifications!
Many layers of her deck had been converted into troop facilities. The capacity of the Dominion of Man was so great that she was capable of accommodating millions of infantry troopers as well as a lot of supplies and supporting facilities!
Yet that did not make her special. Her unique feature was her Spatial Transfer System.
These were interconnected machines and instruments that granted the Dominion of Man the ability to precisely teleport large amounts of troops!
While there were other starships that could perform similar feats, the Dominion of Man was able to teleport her troops into enemy locations a lot better.
Her Spatial Transfer System could overcome stronger and more ubiquitous spatial suppression and spatial interference fields.
The troop-carrying dreadnought was also capable of transferring a much greater quantity of troops at much further distances.
Best of all, her STS was more precise and produced errors at much lower rates!
The Dominion of Man was able to accomplish all of this by herself, but her range and precision could become even greater if she received the support of scouting units and infiltration units.
Combining all of these means together meant that hundreds of thousands of highly trained and excellently equipped Dread Marines rapidly took the crews of alien warships by surprise and caused all kinds of havoc inside their hulls!
Though their attrition rate was not low, the fleeters could easily train replacements so long as they were willing to spend enough resources.
While all of this took place, the gods on this battlefield commenced their battle further away!
Both sides had made a tacit agreement to slug it out against each other without affecting the other forces.
This allowed the Fist of Defiance and the First Flame to fight against their ancient phase whale opponents with fewer restraints!
The human and alien gods fought a relatively intense but enjoyable battle at first.
Just as his name suggested, the First Flame was a pilot that embodied the element of fire.
His god mech was called the Phoenix and happened to be shaped like a flaming avian beast mech!
"<nullb>MY WINGS SHALL BURN YOUR SPACE."
Every time the Phoenix maneuvered across the battlefield, the avian god mech left a trail of fire behind that persisted long after its passage, especially if it was affected by the First Flame's God Kingdom!
The god pilot took advantage of this trait to steadily transform the environment into a growing inferno.
The greater the quantity of flames, the hotter they burned!
The Phoenix visibly grew stronger as the inferno grew. Its God Kingdom became stronger as well, making it easier to suppress the diverse spatial attacks of the opposing alien leaders.
"<nullb>LET THIS DWARF GALAXY BURN."
Not only were the two ancient phase whales less capable of exerting their tricky spatial manipulation abilities, their mobility also dropped as the surrounding flames weakened their warp bubbles!
All went well for a while until an unexpected accident occurred.
A third ancient phase whale appeared on the battlefield!
It turned out that the ancient phase whale had decided to seclude himself a long time ago. He created a pocket space in this important location and disappeared from the local galactic community for so many ages that even the Red Cabal had forgotten about his existence!
The heavy fighting woke him up from his lengthy hibernation. Even though the isolated ancient phase whale had no idea what was going on these days, he needed no explanation to join forces with his fellow gods!
As such, the Fist of Defiance and the First Flame abruptly became outnumbered!
When the three ancient phase whales cooperated with each other, they managed to overpower the moderately strong space suppression field generated by the two god mechs.
The powerful native gods regained much of their spatial manipulation abilities!
This not only allowed them to traverse faster across the battlefield, but also launch a wide variety of spatial attacks at the two god mechs!
The clever ancient phase whales displaced or snuffed out many of the flame traits that had been trying to roast the alien leaders.
This had weakened the First Flame to an extent and forced him to rely on its other capabilities to inflict serious damage onto his adversaries.
The Fist of Defiance on the other hand just fought harder in response to this latest of events!
"<nullb>THE MORE FRIENDS YOU BRING, THE HARDER I WILL PUNCH!"
The god pilot who successfully dictated the future of red humanity showed an unprecedented amount of fighting spirit when fighting against the three ancient phase whales!
The Invictus glowed brighter as its empowered attacks shattered the spatial barriers in its way!
No amount of resistance could stop the god mech from punching the native gods until they were black and blue!
"<nullb»I THRIVE IN ADVERSITY!"
Ever since the two god pilots became outnumbered, the Fist of Defiance no longer pulled his punches and started to expose his greater abilities!
His most fearsome attack was his god mech leveraged his entire God Kingdom into his punch!
The ancient phase whales all showed signs of fear when the enormous God Kingdom imitated the form of the Invictus on a much larger scale! Its volume had become comparable in size to that of the moon-sized aquatic aliens!
The exaggerated size provided great benefits to the Fist of Defiance. He was no longer afraid of entering into a physical contest against the formidable ancient whales.
When the Invictus threw its punch, the shaped God Kingdom did the same!
Its immense energy fist slammed against the reclusive ancient phase whale with so much force that the latter's body uncontrollably launched backwards!
The single punch had not only produced a deep dent into the side of the massive alien, but also managed to break one of his incredibly thick and resilient ribs!
